Persuading Your Stakeholders

Persuade your stakeholders. But how?

Yes, this is what we all want to know how to do!

Persuading your org to engage in strategic qual research is challenging.

Leadership is unfamiliar with the idea of seeing market opportunities from the perspective of people. Stakeholders are often trapped in the cycle of feature improvement.

Here are some tips and places to learn more.

Tips for persuading stakeholders

9 Barriers to “Yes” – Problem Space Research

Indi Young, 8-Aug-20

Organizations are starving for knowledge, and they think everything is fine

3 Ways to Change Orgs that Loathe Wasting Time

Indi Young, 14-May-18

In the tech world, as well as in other industries (like science), there is an overriding push to speed up discovery. In business, the root cause is often...

Finding Budget

Indi Young, 8-Aug-20

Every few weeks I create an estimate for a potential client’s problem space research study. Sometimes they want a ballpark...

Aligned: Stakeholder Management for Product Leaders

by Bruce McCarthy and Melissa Appel

I know Bruce and Melissa and LOVE what they have to say in their book! Solid ideas based on solid experience.

Show Stakeholders the Gaps in how your org currently learns
(Vocabulary, Metrics, Methods)

Define Value Beyond “faster-easier-efficient-scalable”

Indi Young - 21-Jul-23

Why does the tech world only think of value in these terms?

In product and service roles, we talk about value a lot. In the tech world, hardly anyone questions what value is.

Your Org’s Strategic Direction Is Based on Research

Indi Young, Kunyi Mangalam - 22-May-23

Research is knowledge-creation. Organizations need knowledge and create it in a variety of ways, from pricing models to audits, customer feedback to employee reviews, or competitor analysis to brand awareness.

Why Organizations Avoid Qualitative Research

Indi Young - 6-Aug-20

Because the business world shuns uncertainty, quantitative data insights get twisted so that the conclusions sound like they were deduced, and their validity unimpeachable.

Lead Your Org in a Shift to people's context (purpose)

A Powerful Lens: People’s Purpose

Indi Young - 29-Jan-21

Let’s say you’re working for an apparel & shoes brand that wants to reduce returns (a.k.a. help customers make the right purchase the first time). You have data about which items get returned more frequently...

Harness Mental Models To Create Strategic Alignment

Joana de Quintanilha - 24-Jun-24

Ask around your org to see if you have a subscription to Forrester Reports

"Make sure you set up a lunch meeting with one of the stakeholders. And keep building that relationship over time."

"Diagrams, colors & patterns catch eyes. People don't like looking at boring words, and they shut down cognitively when they're feeling overwhelmed by too much information. I think of it like teaching kindergarteners."

--E. Tae

Join the Indiyoung Slack Workspace #ongoing-discussion channel to ask for advice about your stakeholders and share ideas.